Jack Parsons and the Unlikely Friend
Jack Parsons was not quite sure-on account of the fact that he was still reeling-but he thought he heard the robot suggest the idea of striking up a small search party for the missing infant. The thought transported him back to reality.
He had no idea what the hell Post-War Boston was going to look like. He had no clue what unknown dangers lie out there. He didn't know if his tiny little pre-planned neighborhood of Sanctuary hills was all that was left, or if there were others… Well, he supposed that there would have to be other people around if his son, Shaun, was kidnapped. He just had no clue where to start looking, which is why he began seriously entertaining the offer of running around house to house with his faithful robot sidekick.
The robot was a Mister Handy, a handy, dandy, self-contained, self-sustained, self-propelled personal servant that had seen a variety of uses in society before the bombs had dropped. It seems that after nuclear annihilation, they had mostly taken up gardening dead and dying plants. This particular Mister Handy had been christened Codsworth by the elated Nora shortly after his purchase, as a birthday present for her previously that fall. Even though Jack had brought Codsworth into the world, so to speak, he and Codsworth did not find themselves on the best of terms. See, Jack had seen plenty of robots on the front, both ones he fought alongside and well, ones he fought, and he found them to be entirely unreliable and untrustworthy. He thought it was completely asinine that something like a Mister Gutsy could replace real soldiers. They simply lacked the human element, something that could never be made up for, no matter how many flamethrowers or machine guns were attached to the chassis.
Yet here Codsworth was, alive and well, unlike so many of his human counterparts. He didn't even seem butthurt from being (intentionally) left behind by Jack during the dash to the Vault. In fact, he seemed a little bit too well. The robot asked Jack if he had had anything to eat in the last 200 years, and offered to make some kind of toast, if that would be to the master's liking. Jack decided to ask the robot if he was, in fact, feeling alright.
"Hey, robot, are you feeling alright?"
Codworth proceeded to have the second emotional breakdown in Sanctuary Hills that morning. Well, if Mister Handys are capable of that sort of thing. He cried:
"You have no idea the pressure I have been under, good sir! I thought you and the missus had died with the rest, but on the off chance that you were to return from the Vault I set about making sure your abode was in tip-top shape for you! But it is oh so hard to clean in the midst of the effects of nuclear fall-"
"Damn it, you bucket of bolts, pull yourself together or I… I'll start your self-destruct sequence!"
Jack did not know for sure whether such a thing existed, but he thought it was worth the bluff. It seemed to work. Codsworth took a moment to compose himself and then re-submitted the aforementioned search party proposal for further review.
"No," said Jack. "That would never work. As much as I want to go house to house stomping on oversized cockroaches, I figure that if my son were in Sanctuary Hills then you would have noticed by now. What I need is a solid lead."
Codsworth pointed a mechanical arm in the direction of Concord, stating that various groups with varying levels of aggression had come and gone there since the radiation subsided. If he was lucky, he could run into a someone friendly and be pointed in the right direction. Hopefully.
Concord was the nearest city, of which Sanctuary Hills was technically a suburb. Jack took a moment to look past the bombed out neighborhood in that direction. Then he took a moment to look, well, around. What he saw was a picture of devastation and decay. The houses around him, once quaint and picturesque, were now barely left standing. The trees all lacked leaves, and the grass all lacked color. The air smelled stale, like Earth's ventilation system had been shut off. There were no signs of life or civilization to be seen, except the Mister Handy in front of him. He sighed. This was Boston now. This was the world now. With the adrenaline wearing off, the weight of what the universe had just thrown at him began to take its toll. He was the man out of time, with everyone he had used to live for burned up or rotted away, except his boy. He told the robot he needed a few minutes, and then trudged indoors.
Jack Parsons looked around in what used to be his house. He didn't know whether he was looking for clues for Shaun's whereabouts, trying to see if there was anything useful to take, or just trying to get away from the obsequious Mister Handy. His living room and kitchen held nothing of interest to him, except for the household notes on his fridge door that had long ago lost their relevance. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom held a stimpak. These stimpaks were a medical sensation before the war, providing a veritable panacea for a variety of ailments. Jack did not know how useful they were in his current context, but he decided to pocket it-as soon as he found clothing with pockets. He realized that he was still in his Vault-issued jumpsuit.
He looked in his room and found the drawers hanging crooked and completely empty. The bedframe was not much more than a rotten husk, with the mattress nowhere to be found. In other words, the house was in ruins. He didn't look in Shaun's room.
He began to feel very tired. And then angry. And then scared, and hurt. And then angry again. He decided he was going to find his son, no matter what it took. He did not care what was out there. But first, he needed a drink. He wanted to feel numb. Before the war, after coming back from the military, he had gotten into the habit of drinking. Excessively. After Nora had threatened to walk out, however, he began to abstain, and did not keep anything that he could be tempted with in his house.
He looked around the next-door neighbor's house for something nice and alcoholic, but alas, he could not find anything. He looked in the next neighbor's house, and the next. Nothing, besides the aforementioned oversized cockroaches. It looked like most of the houses had been picked clean by looters, and one was the final resting place of a skeleton who had unsuccessfully tried to survive in the godforsaken wasteland. Jack cursed, and then made up his mind to investigate Concord, both for the boy and for the booze. He would even settle for something a little more narcotic, if it availed itself.
Motivated by paternal love and a proclivity toward the addictive, he marched back to Codsworth.
"Come on, we're going to Concord."